MATTHEW DAVIS:

Tuesday

May 14, 2019 at 6:29 PM

For the past 30 years Habit Opco’s methadone van has pulled into the parking lot at 24 Broad St, adjacent to the Quincy Police Department headquarters, to deliver daily methadone doses to 167 patients, most of them Quincy residents who are battling opioid addiction. The van itself is a relic, the last operational methadone van in the Commonwealth. The Drug Enforcement Administration has not licensed a new van since 2007, out of concern the van could be breached and the substance end up on the street.

A little over a mile away from the van is the site of Habit Opco’s weekly opioid counseling offices. Surrounded by Quincy Center’s redevelopment, the lease ends in November and the owner has declined to renew it.

To address this imminent closure, Habit Opco has for the last three years been in search of a new location where these two vital services could be collocated—moving the methadone indoors into the same space as the counseling, and creating a more appropriate experience for medical care—medical patients don’t generally use their vehicles as waiting rooms, nor receive care in a 27-year-old van in a pothole filled parking lot.

Thankfully, the owner of the building at 24 Broad St agreed to lease the space needed to collocate these critical services as a Comprehensive Treatment Center like Habit Opco operates in 12 other Massachusetts cities and towns. The location is ideal: it sits on a dead-end road full of large, mostly empty parking lots. There are no residences on Broad St. The current dosing site is literally across the road. The Quincy Police station is a stone’s throw away.

Despite the obvious need for Habit Opco’s services in Quincy, and the appropriateness of the location, Quincy’s Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) unanimously rejected the application in late February, citing traffic concerns. A ZBA member said that Broad St—a mostly unused dead-end—was “too chaotic” for the treatment center.

There would be no new traffic on Broad St. Every patient the new facility at 24 Broad St. would provide methadone to already travels to 39 Broad St. every day, and has been doing so without issue for three decades. The only additional traffic anticipated would be the handful of Habit Opco employees who now provide counseling at the Quincy Center location.

By denying this permit, the zoning board of appeals has discriminated against those in need of often life-saving treatment. Unfortunately, this occurs as Massachusetts endures the deadliest opioid epidemic in history: in 2017 there were 28.2 opioid related deaths per 100,000 people.

Quincy was a leader in providing police with Narcan, so that overdoses can be treated. Since Quincy police deployed Narcan, the department has administered naloxone 913 times, successfully reversing 849 overdoses. Many of those 849 individuals need ongoing counseling, and will need daily methadone doses to remain safe. Combining methadone treatment with opioid counselling helps ensure continuation of treatment, lowering risk for those suffering from addiction. Methadone is an evidenced-based practice proven to prevent relapse and death, and it has never been needed in Quincy more than it is now.

Habit Opco has committed to continuing to treat those in need in Quincy, and has found what we believe to be the best location at which we can make good on that commitment. Now it’s time for Quincy’s elected officials to make that same commitment by reversing ZBAs denial, to help those in need by approving the medical treatment center’s application. Quincy residents’ lives depend on it.

Matthew N. Davis is regional vice president of CTC Group, operator of the Habit OPCO Quincy Treatment Center, which provides counseling and medically supervised methadone and Suboxone maintenance treatment to individuals attempting to overcome addiction or dependence on heroin or other opioids

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